Many workers not protected from harassment

Employers still have a lot to do to protect workers from sexual harassment, judging by the results of a recent survey.

More than half (55 per cent) of workers in the U.S. say they have been sexually harassed in the workplace, breaking down to 62 per cent among women and 48 per cent among men.

Although inappropriate and criminal sexual behaviour lessened thanks to the #MeToo movement, “sexual harassment in the workplace is still shockingly pervasive,” says Jen Pieniazek, career expert at Resume-Now.

The top five sexual harassment behaviours are: 

• general sexual comments or innuendos (43 per cent)
• sexual comments about your body (43 per cent)
• someone calling a person “girl,” “hunk,” “doll,” “boy,” “baby,” “honey” or other pet names or demeaning names (33 per cent)
• whistling, catcalls (33 per cent)
• work topics turning into sexual topics (30 per cent)

In September, the Association of Alberta Sexual Assault Services (AASAS) called on employers to join a storytelling campaign to change the sexual harassment in the workplace narrative.

Employers lacking in response

When asked whom they were sexually harassed by, respondents’ top replies are a colleague (51 per cent) and senior employee (40 per cent). They also named customers (24 per cent), the boss (24 per cent), a C-suite executive (17 per cent) and someone they supervise (six per cent), finds the survey of 785 American employees.

Also of concern? More than half (53 per cent) of respondents say they were fired from work for reporting sexual harassment, according to the Resume-Now survey.

And more than a quarter (28 per cent) did not feel that their complaint of sexual harassment was taken seriously.

Nearly half (47 per cent) of workers say their employer did not offer sexual harassment training.

Canadian researchers launched a national survey looking for answers as to why people are not reporting incidents of harassment in the workplace.

Mental health impacts

Sexual harassment has a lot of negative effects on victims, according to the report. Nearly eight in 10 (79 per cent) say it had “affected their physical and/or psychological well-being”, and 17 per cent have experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“Although there are different types of sexual harassment, all of them contribute to an employee feeling psychologically disturbed and even physically ill,” says Pieniazek.

The top three symptoms women experience from harassment are emotional exhaustion (58 per cent), anxiety (36 per cent) and sleep problems (33 per cent). For men, these are emotional exhaustion (56 per cent), headaches (36 per cent), and sleep problems and depression (both 28 per cent).